Peter,
All benchtop testing so far. I've had the camera face down on
the bench with the nosepiece capped for darks, so I didn't
even check if the CCD had dew on it!
I could easily fry the camera this way of course....you don't
want condensation forming on an SMD circuit board!
The DSI actually lends itself well to making a cold chamber or
at least isolating it from the circuit board and still allowing it
to function. The CCD is soldered on to a rectangular section
of board that has fine gaps removed from the PCB material,
just leaving the tracks intact for operation.
I can't think why they have done this other than maybe to suppress
the electronic noise around the CCD area or for maybe a cooling
purpose. Dunno.
Either way, it would be quite easy to cut the whole CCD board
section out...extend the legs into a cold chamber and seal it up.
This could possibly add noise to the whole thing too and fail
miserably
Steve